


your lying swan sings as i reach (lost souls dancing, now the lie's collapsing)

by voxofthevoid



Series: i see the crimson thief (hanging on heartstrings, dripping bleach) [1]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Canon-Typical Violence, Dark Steve Rogers, Dubious Consent, Kidnapping, M/M, Mind Manipulation, Mindfuck, Mystery, Non-Consensual Blood Drinking, Rape/Non-con Elements, Vampire Hunter Bucky Barnes, Vampire Steve Rogers, Vampire/Thrall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:49:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29500887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxofthevoid/pseuds/voxofthevoid
Summary: Lips brush his ear and a voice of distilled sin asks, “May I have this dance?”Bucky tips his head back, hyperaware of the miniscule comm tucked into his other ear, and says, “I think this is the wrong scene for that, pal.”The mouth pressed to his ear curves into a smile.“Well, not with that attitude,” the man says, spinning Bucky around with a strength that surprises him.Once he lays eyes on the owner of the thick arms and husky voice, Bucky’s cock shakes off the last of its disinterest to say hi. But Bucky’s a fucking professional, and he’s got a vampire to stake, so he spins them around, savoring how the man’s eyes widen at the manhandling. If he’s bothered by the metal fingers digging into his hip, he doesn’t show it, gamely pressing closer to Bucky once they’re still. Bucky allows it because they’re close in height; the man has maybe a couple of centimeters on him. Either way, he can watch the dancing vampire over his shoulder. And if the slide of the man’s thigh between his legs is distracting, well, Bucky’s worked in worse circumstances.“Still in position, Barnes?” Rumlow asks. “Or did you fuck off to get dicked?”-You will meet a stranger.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: i see the crimson thief (hanging on heartstrings, dripping bleach) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2166981
Comments: 155
Kudos: 473
Collections: Start Reading





	your lying swan sings as i reach (lost souls dancing, now the lie's collapsing)

**Author's Note:**

> This one is…fucked up. The first two parts, especially, are something of a mindfuck, and later, things become clearer, plot-wise, but the fuckery remains very much in place. Read the tags carefully, and if you’d like more detailed warnings, feel free to hit me up on my [tumblr](https://voxofthevoid.tumblr.com/).

Thick arms slide around Bucky’s waist, tugging him back against a body that seems to be made of bedrock. And underneath the bubbling irritation, there’s a flash of interest, which Bucky blames on the pounding music and the writhing bodies all around him. He’s at an age where picking up strangers in quiet bars is more pleasant than getting wrecked at loud parties, but he’s got to admit that the latter has a certain dirty charm to it.

Still, he’s about to push away from the person behind him and send a clear enough message when lips brush his ear and a voice of distilled sin asks, “May I have this dance?”

It stuns Bucky for a few seconds, and then he bursts out laughing. It’s a distraction he can’t quite afford, but he doesn’t take his eyes off the woman—girl, almost, in appearance, but she could be twice Bucky’s age or more, for all they know—dancing with abandon several feet away, so it’s fine. He tips his head back, hyperaware of the miniscule comm tucked into his left ear, and says, “I think this is the wrong scene for that, pal.”

The mouth pressed to his ear— _not_ the one with the comm, though the others probably heard him anyway—curves into a smile.

“Well, not with that attitude,” the man says, spinning Bucky around with a strength that surprises him.

Then he lays eyes on the owner of the thick arms and husky voice, and Bucky’s cock shakes off the last of its disinterest to say hi. But Bucky’s a fucking professional, and he’s got a vampire to stake, so he spins them around, savoring how the man’s eyes widen at the manhandling. If he’s bothered by the metal fingers digging into his hip, he doesn’t show it, gamely pressing closer to Bucky once they’re still. Bucky allows it because they’re close in height; the man has maybe a couple of centimeters on him. Either way, he can watch the dancing vampire over his shoulder. And if the slide of the man’s thigh between his legs is distracting, well, Bucky’s worked in worse circumstances.

He sinks the fingers of his flesh hand into the man’s lush hair, gripping a handful and holding him there, letting their bodies writhe together while freeing Bucky to watch the woman.

“Still in position, Barnes?” Rumlow asks. And then, because he’s an asshole, he adds, “Or did you fuck off to get dicked?”

Bucky wants to tell him to die in a ditch, but with the two of them pressed this close, there’s no way the man won’t hear, and work or not, Bucky’s not going to pass up the opportunity to feel up the brick shithouse that fell into his lap. He coughs twice, a signal that he’s in position but can’t talk, and Rumlow subsides with a nasty snigger.

“You alright?” the man asks, one oversized palm splaying over the small of Bucky’s back, making him feel curiously small. “Water?”

The Witch changes dance partners, dragging a leather-clad redhead close to her and alarm jolts through Bucky when she buries her face in the redhead’s throat. She wouldn’t drink here, it’s too public, but the way her would-be victim parts her lips and arches her neck for the Witch’s mouth gives Bucky a bad feeling.

“Yeah,” he tells the man. Play time’s over. “I could use some water.”

The man steps away, hands lingering on Bucky’s body as if they’re not quite willing to let go. It’s nice and he doesn’t have the time for it, but he still takes a second to enjoy and return the man’s smile before he slips away to fetch Bucky water. He won’t be here when the guy comes back, which would be mean if it weren’t for a good cause.

“Okay,” he murmurs into the comm, moving lazily to the beat while keeping an eye on the Witch. Vampires have enhanced senses, but the loud music and crowding bodies give Bucky and his team a good cover. Still, it doesn’t hurt to be careful. “I think she’s going to move soon. You ready?”

“Yeah,” Rollins says.

“You’re shitty bait, Barnes,” Rumlow pipes in because that fucker never learned when to keep his mouth shut. “Don’t know why we sent you to snag a chick when you don’t even swing that way.”

“For the last time,” Bucky hisses, and it’s hard to convey rage when he’s barely moving his lips, but he manages, “I’m bisexual.”

Rumlow huffs and says nothing. He’s an ignorant idiot, but he’s not entirely wrong; Bucky doesn’t swing that way as far as the Witch is concerned. She’s thin and waifish, and Bucky likes his women the same way he likes his men—capable of and willing to fuck him up against a wall.

Of course, she’s a vampire, so she probably could. But then, she’s a vampire, so Bucky would rather drink lava.

“I don’t see her,” Murthi says.

She’s also in the club, somewhere in the crowd, dressed, like Bucky, to catch a vampire’s eye. Seems they’ve both failed, since the Witch is still making out with the redhead’s throat. Bucky can’t see any blood.

“I do. She’s with a woman. Redhead. Leather crop top.”

“Typical,” Rumlow says with a snort.

“Man, shut up,” Murthi snaps. She’s the only other person in the whole team with sense. “Wait, I think I see her. Barnes, she’s moving.”

Bucky takes a step forward, and it’s like the dancing fucks around him choose that exact moment to crowd him in. A tall shadow blocks his sight for a few seconds, and by the time Bucky shoves and squirms his way amidst growled curses to a better vantage point, the Witch is nowhere to be seen.

“Fuck, shit, I’ve lost her.”

“I got it,” Murthi says, voice strained. “Back entrance, Rollins, you in—what the fu—”

There’s a telltale crackle and then silence. Bucky’s blood turns cold.

“Murthi?”

She doesn’t respond. The music pounds louder, making Bucky’s head throb and spin. He stumbles blindly out of the crowd, toward the wall where he last saw the Witch, but all he finds is a couple making out, the strobe lights flashing red-green-yellow on their sweaty skin.

“Hey,” Rumlow says tightly. “This isn’t a joke, kid. Where the fuck are you? Rollins, you see her? Rollins? Fuck it, Jack!”

Silence.

“Barnes?” Rumlow says, and this time, he sounds almost scared.

“I’m here,” Bucky says numbly, looking around frantically, finding only strangers. “Where’s—”

A body slots itself along his back, pressing intimately close. Bucky instinctively tries to pull away, but he’d held back by the arm that slides around his waist. It feels like a bar of iron. And familiar.

“Don’t bother,” says the man from before. “She’s long gone. You friends will be too, soon enough.”

Ice drives itself into Bucky’s gut, but his hand is equally swift, reaching for the knife at his belt. His hand is knocked away before it can even touch the handle, and there’s a dizzying second as he’s spun around and caught again in the man’s arm, held effortlessly still.

Bucky looks up and meets blue eyes threaded through with vampire gold.

“Barnes?”

Rumlow’s voice is tinny in his ears, like he’s shouting from very far away. Bucky can’t look away from the man’s eyes.

“You’re not really good bait for the Witch,” the man—the vampire—says. “But I’m a whole other story, sweetheart.”

“Barnes,” someone says, the voice vaguely familiar. “Who’s that with you? Who are you talk—fuck, what the fuck, Barnes! Backup, call—”

Someone screams in Bucky’s ear. He jolts, but the vampire’s arm is holding him tight. His other hand rises, brushing Bucky’s hair gently back. When he pulls his hand away, there’s something small and black pinched between his fingers. It turns to crackling dust between his thumb and forefinger.

“I’m sorry,” the man says. “I didn’t get you water.”

Bucky will never know what it is about those words that pierce through the fog in his mind.

But they do, and he brings his hands up and shoves with all his strength, and the vampire stumbles back, but his expression says it’s more from shock than anything else. Bucky doesn’t stick around to find out.

He runs.

He pushes past bodies, slams into a wall, and then slams into someone’s drink, and people curse after him, but he hears nothing except the pounding of his blood in his ears. He damn near breaks a door rushing out, and there are more shouts again, but Bucky doesn’t stop, just keeps running, legs burning, fingers cold.

When he comes to a stop, he’s alone in some dark alley, and he’s heaving for breath.

He looks around himself, sees only brick walls. There’s enough light from the street to illuminate faded graffiti. It’s the kind of place people get killed in, and Bucky’s armed with knives and guns and a silver-tipped stake, but one man alone is no match for a vampire, even one immune to their thrall.

Bucky was immune to their thrall, or so he thought until he fell into gold-veined blue.

“Bucky,” says a voice already burned into his memory.

The man slinks out of the darkness, shadows clinging to his edges like he’s made out of them. Bucky takes a step toward the mouth of the alley, but the vampire’s _there_ in a blur of movement.

Bucky almost trips, stumbling back. He does reach his knife this time, but the vampire progresses, unhindered, gliding a step forward for each of Bucky’s backward stumbles.

He draws his gun. The vampire pauses for a second—but just a second.

“Don’t,” Bucky snaps, surprised when his voice comes out clear and steady. “Stay the fuck away.”

“I can’t do that, Buck.”

It sinks in only then, what the vampire’s calling him.

“How do you know my name?”

The question slips out before Bucky can help it, but he knows, he _knows_ it’s a bad idea.

“I know you,” the vampire says, steadily advancing. “You know me too. Deep in your soul.”

Bucky’s back hits a wall. His head spins. The vampire keeps coming.

The first shot goes wildly off-target, a mistake Bucky didn’t make even the first time he fought a vampire. The second hits home. The vampire’s right shoulder jerks back, but he doesn’t break stride, calm as he creeps closer.

Bucky shoots until the gun clicks empty. The vampire steps casually away from the bullets, and the closer he gets, the stronger the scent of blood.

Bucky drops the gun and tightens his grip on the knife, allowing himself a single moment of sheer panic before he pushes it out of his mind. He readies himself. Between one moment and the next, there’s barely a foot of space separating them.

The vampire blinks gold-blue eyes at him.

“Bucky,” he says, and Bucky’s limp fingers let go of the knife. He looks down, moving his head through what feels like thick, hot paste, and finds the dark handle sticking out of the vampire’s stomach. As he watches, long fingers wrap around the handle and pulls it out.

The blade glints in the dim light, dark with patches of blood.

The vampire drops the knife and presses his palm to the wound. His other hand cups Bucky’s jaw and raises his head. The eyes are almost entirely gold now. Bucky has to look away, but he can’t.

“Don’t,” he manages to say. “My—get out of my head.”

The vampire smiles, an oddly soft expression. His teeth are white and blunt.

“Natural immunity,” he says, and chills go down Bucky’s spine. “It’s rare. No one’s ever touched your mind before.”

Bucky tries, in a flash of clarity, to lean back, get away, but there nowhere to go; he’s trapped between the wall and the vampire.

“Ssh,” the vampire hushes, hand drifting down Bucky’s throat to rest gently against his heart. “I won’t hurt you.”

“S-stop.”

His teeth are chattering, his head hurts, and there’s a fog curling over his senses.

The vampire’s expression shifts into mild surprise.

“You’re strong,” he says, happy, impressed almost. “But it’s not enough, is it? Not for me. Your soul knows mine, Bucky Barnes. Your mind will always let me in.”

Blood-soaked fingers curl around Bucky’s jaw. The sharp copper scent stings his nose. The vampire drags his own blood along Bucky’s neck and jaw and presses damp fingertips to the curve of his cheek. He tilts Bucky’s face up, intention unmistakable, and Bucky can’t not let him.

Instead of sharp teeth at his throat, he gets lips slotting along his mouth.

Every cell in him freezes.

The kiss is chaste, light. The vampire’s lips are soft, cool, immeasurably gentle as they brush over Bucky’s. For the life of him, he can’t tell whether it’s the thrall or sheer shock that keeps him quiet and passive, but the sudden clarity of his thoughts makes him fear the latter.

The vampire moves his mouth lower, dragging his lips along Bucky’s jaw, the gesture tender until his tongue darts out to lick the blood smeared on Bucky’s skin. Bucky makes a faint, disgusted noise, but something about the wet flicks of tongue against sensitive skin makes heat pool in his gut. Bucky doesn’t know if it’s rage or desire, but the terrifying thing is that he can’t trust his mind to tell him the truth.

The vampire dips his head and buries his face in Bucky’s throat, mouthing at the drying blood there. Points of teeth dig into his skin, to the side of where his pulse pounds in frenzy, and Bucky claws his way into his senses.

He pushes at the vampire and throws himself away, but this time, surprise isn’t enough of a weapon. Bucky staggers a few feet to the side, and that’s as far as he gets before he’s caught and his face is yanked upwards. He squeezes his eyes shut, blocking out blue and gold.

The vampire laughs. It’s a quiet sound, amused but not cruel, and Bucky doesn’t know why he knows that, why he cares.

“You are strong,” the vampire says, impressed. A finger taps Bucky’s temple, and he screws his eyes shut even tighter. “Here. And—”

The same finger trails down the side of his face and wet neck, along his shoulders and down his left arm over the flimsy fabric of his sheer black shirt. The vampire curls his hand around Bucky’s metal bicep and presses his palm flat to where the white star would be.

“—here. You surprised me when I saw you. So different. But the same where it counts.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Bucky asks through gritted teeth, eyes still closed.

“You’ll understand,” comes the cryptic answer, and now, the heat in him is definitely rage. “Look at me, Bucky.”

Bucky bares his teeth and keeps his eyes shut. The vampire reacts with a rough exhale, almost a snort.

“That won’t work. _Look at me_.”

The words reverberate in his head. Bucky’s eyes flutter open.

Gold spears into his soul.

-

There’s movement.

Voices murmuring. Hands in his hair. Lips on his face. Stubble under his fingertips.

“Wake up,” someone says. “Bucky, ssh, sweetheart, come back.”

Bucky pries his eyes open. He doesn’t want to, but he has to. The voice is asking.

There’s a white ceiling, blocked out in a blink by a familiar face. Rough thumbs slot along Bucky’s cheekbones, broad palms cupping his face, crushing force contained in a tender hold.

“Sweetheart,” the vampire says. “There you are.”

Clarity trickles in. He’s naked, spread out on sheets that feel expensive, softer and lusher than anything he’s ever owned. His lips feel numb the way they do after he’s kissed and been kissed for longer than is wise, caught and held in blind passion.

He licks them, and the vampire’s eyes track the motion.

Bucky’s not surprised when he’s hauled up into a kiss. He bites hard at the vampire’s lip, but all that does is make him groan and kiss harder, tongue sliding between Bucky’s lips, fingers tightening on his jaw.

The shape of the kiss is familiar, and Bucky has a sinking feeling he knows why.

His arms tremble when he raises them. His fingers dig into the vampire’s bare shoulders, but he can’t summon the strength to push him away a third time. He just lies there, head spinning, mind reeling, and lets himself be kissed until the numbness of his lips is a bright, raw ache.

The eyes that peer down at him, once the vampire pulls away, are blue, not gold, but Bucky still can’t pry his stare away.

“Why?” he asks before he can help himself. “Who are you?”

Gentle fingers brush Bucky’s mouth, the curve of his jaw, slide into his hair to find a home in the long strands.

“You know me,” the vampire says, soft and smiling.

“Pal,” Bucky says, and it’s easy enough to find the words, less so to speak, just like how he can tell he’s enthralled body and mind but can’t, for the first time in his life, fight it off, can barely try, “I’ve never seen you in my entire life.”

The vampire’s face tightens, wide smile and crinkled eyes vanishing. It’s terrifying, the quiet fury left behind, and the worst thing is that he looks so _human_.

Bucky whimpers, helpless and pinned.

The vampire is calm the next second, eyes widening in a mockery of concern. He pats Bucky’s face as if to console him, making low hushing noises that sound distressingly genuine. His fingers rub soothing circles into Bucky’s scalp.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart, hush, don’t fret. I didn’t mean to scare you. I forget. You’re right. You’ve never met me in this life. I’m sorry it took me so long to change that.”

Bucky shakes his head weakly, confused, and is alarmed to stillness by how the gentle strokes through his hair actually calm him down. It’s unnatural; Bucky hasn’t been held so gently since his ma died, torn to pieces by the things she hunted.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” the vampire whispers the name like a secret, tender and reverent. “Bucky.”

“H-how do you know my name?”

“I know you,” he says. “I’ve always been true.”

He kisses the next, confused question from Bucky’s mouth and doesn’t stop there, mouthing down his throat, sucking wetly. His mouth’s hot and for a vampire, that only ever means one thing. He fed recently.

Bucky tries to turn his awareness to his body. He’s never been bitten before, but he knows instinctively, that he still hasn’t been. He’s enthralled and half frozen at this vampire’s mercy, but he hasn’t been fed on.

As if summoned by the thought, sharp teeth graze his throat.

“No!”

Bucky’s shocked by the sudden strength in his voice. The vampire must be too; he raises his head and pins Bucky with a calm, curious gaze.

“It’s alright,” he murmurs. “I won’t hurt you.”

The hand he has in Bucky’s hair trails down to cup his cheek. The blood is gone, Bucky realizes abruptly. Blood from the wounds Bucky caused, washed away from the vampire’s hands and Bucky’s face.

“Please,” he says. He tries to move—push the vampire away, squirm out from under him, something, anything. But his body’s frozen, blanketed by the vampire’s broader form.

“Ssh,” the vampire croon against Bucky’s jaw, lips puckering in a gentle kiss. “Just breathe. It’ll feel good.”

He looks different with canines extended. Eyes sharper. Mouth crueler.

His hand tilts Bucky’s face back, baring his throat. Bucky gulps in air and whimpers when hot breath falls on his Adam’s apple. A wet tongue flicks over the skin there and traces a filthy path to his carotid artery.

S.H.I.E.L.D. made them study anatomy. Bucky knows the human circulatory system like an old friend. He knows what happens when a vampire bites a human.

It’s not enough.

Cold knowledge dissolves in the fire that floods his veins, and it’s not pain, Bucky knows pain, but he has no defense against the molten pleasure that sweeps through and pulls him under. Teeth slide wetly out of his flesh and a mouth latches on; hot suction burns a hole in his skin, and Bucky writhes under the vampire, limbs wrapped around his broad form not to push him away but to pull him in, closer, deeper, every cell in him desperate for more.

The vampire moves and takes Bucky with him, folding Bucky’s body into his lap without taking his mouth away. A hand wraps around his cock, and Bucky jolts with desire he doesn’t remember feeling, cock hard and gushing.

A moment of hard suction, the wet swipe of a tongue, a piercing chill where a gushing wound used to be.

Bucky drags in breath like a drowning man, and the kiss that forces air into his lungs tastes of burnt copper.

It doesn’t last. His scalp stings, his neck aches from the sharp arch of it, and when teeth sink into him this time, Bucky can’t tell where it is, the whole of him set alight. 

Searing heat pools in his gut, cock throbbing in the vampire’s grip. Bucky realizes, in a split-second of clarity, that he’s writhing in the man’s lap, rutting madly into his hand and scrabbling at his skin, madly chasing— _something_.

He comes, sudden and explosive, and it’s no release, not with teeth still lodged in his throat.

“The way you taste,” someone says.

Wet heat smears across Bucky’s jaw. A metallic tang floods his mouth as he sucks on a tongue.

Everything blurs.

There are hands on him, groping and palming bare skin, sliding wetly over stomach and up thighs, pushing inside, wet and thick. He gulps in air and breathes into another mouth and screams in staccato.

He’s on his back, legs in the air, spread on a thick cock. He’s aware, in the scant space between one ragged breath and the next, that his neck hurts and his ass burns and that none of it matters because he’s throbbing with a pleasure that threatens to unravel him.

And then it does, sweeping him under with the touch of teeth to where neck meets shoulder.

-

A long time later, Bucky wakes to soft sheets and a warm body. He can’t open his eyes. He can’t move even a finger. His entirely body aches, not unpleasantly, but the accompanying exhaustion is almost painful.

Fingers stroke his hair, cup his face.

“I took too much,” says a clear, familiar voice. “It’s okay. You’ll be fine, sweetheart.”

Bucky tries to speak, open his eyes, _something_ , but he can’t do anything more than tremble against the vampire’s body.

The smell of blood saturates the air, sharp and sudden.

Something flat is pressed to Bucky’s lips, smeared with wet warmth.

“Open your mouth.”

Bucky opens his mouth.

It tastes like nothing and everything, and Bucky’s suddenly ravenous for it, gulping it down and moaning as it slides thickly down his throat.

“Look at you,” the vampire says. His lips are close to Bucky’s ear, brushing the shell. “Made for this, sweetheart.”

Bucky doesn’t understand. He can’t care.

The giving warmth detaches itself from his lips, and he whines, trying in vain to chase after it. The vampire chuckles, soft and fond. He kisses Bucky’s ear, his cheek, the corner of his eyes.

“Open your eyes, Buck.”

Bright, happy blue peer down at him. The vampire smiles. It lights up his whole face, makes Bucky’s chest throb.

 _I know you_ , he wants to say, but no, no—

“I am so sorry,” the vampire tells Bucky, and he does look regretful, his whole face raw with it. “But I need you to forget this.”

“Wh-what?”

A wet, sticky kiss. Bucky almost closes his eyes again but thumbs stroke the corners of his eyes, coaxes them open.

“Forget everything,” the vampire murmurs, blue eyes said now. “I’ll erase everything. For your own safety. But Buck, don’t worry. I’ll find you.”

“I—I don’t—”

Gold creeps into blue.

Bucky forgets what he was going to say.

-

He bolts upright in bed, heart pounding, wisps of a dream clinging to the insides of his head. He gropes, eyes clenched shut, for his phone. But his hands find only empty air where a table should be, and when Bucky pries his eyes open, he damn near stops breathing.

Pale light filters in through blue curtains, casting a vaguely pleasant glow on a room he’s never seen before in his entire fucking life. Bucky shoves the suddenly suffocating covers off him and leaps off the bed, but he has to sit down just as fast, head spinning violently.

He allows himself a few minutes to just put his head in his hands and breathe before the need to know where the hell he is kicks in.

On closer examination, the answer’s pretty clear—a motel room and not a half-bad one. S.H.I.E.L.D. business has made Bucky very acquainted with motels and hotels and even the occasional camp ground. If he could remember how the fuck he got here, the whole situation would be perfectly banal.

Bucky reaches for his phone but stops short when his hand tries to slide into a pocket that doesn’t seem to exist.

He looks down at himself.

He’s in sweatpants, loose and comfortable and distinctly not his own. His chest is bare. He looks down at the swell of his pecs like it’s an alien expanse of skin. And he tries to remember something, anything, of where he is and how he got here, but it’s the mental equivalent of running into a brick wall. Bucky’s not unfamiliar with that situation, neither literally nor metaphorically, but when he gets blackout drunk, he usually at least remembers the drinking.

He tries his luck on the bed.

The shirt’s his own; it’s a black, flimsy thing that he only wears when he’s out looking to get bent over in a seedy bathroom stall somewhere. He hasn’t done that in a—

Motherfucker.

It doesn’t all rush back so much as trickle in, image by image. The Witch, the club, the pounding music, and the dancing throng. Bucky’s head hurts thinking about it.

The newfound memory doesn’t bring any clarity with it. Did they ever find the Witch?

He picks up the shirt. It’s torn. There’s a huge patch of fabric just missing. If he wears it, he’ll be flashing his belly button to whoever’s on the street and god.

Bucky almost doesn’t notice it. The off-white tee almost blends in with the motel bedcovers. It’s definitely not his own, but it’s there, neatly folded and left beside his shirt. He picks it up and almost goes weak at the knees to find his phone underneath.

He doesn’t waste time. There’s not much battery left but it’s enough.

Sharon picks up on the third ring.

“Thank fuck,” Bucky says. “Hey, so what—”

“Where the fuck are you?”

Her tone stuns him for a second. It’s angry, but he knows Sharon, knows that strain of terror in her rage.

“I…don’t know,” Bucky says. His confusion turns into a sinking in his gut. “I woke up—somewhere. I don’t know. Called you first. Sharon, what happened?”

There’s a beat of silence. He can hear her breath, harsh and ragged. It’s so unlike her that his stomach twists itself into knots.

“What do you remember?” she asks.

“I don’t,” Bucky says quietly. “We were hunting the Witch. I was bait. Murthi and I both. I remember the club. Did we—did we get her?”

The silence is longer this time.

And it’s never good when Sharon’s out of words. She’s not one to be delicate, to hold back or spare feelings. It’s always the truth with her, even when it hits like a fist to the dick.

“No, James,” she says very carefully and Bucky’s blood turns to ice. “They’re dead.”

“Who.”

“Rumlow. Rollins. Murthi.”

The entire team.

“We thought you were too,” she adds, and Bucky doesn’t know if he’s imagining the tremble in her voice. “We were looking for a body, James.”

Bucky lets that sink in. He drops heavily to the bed, white shirt still clutched in his metal fist. He stares unseeingly at the crumpled fabric. It’s not the first time he’s lost teammates. They die like flies, doing what they do against creatures well beyond human might.

The gleaming metal of his left hand is a reminder of how close he came to it himself.

“What happened?” he asks.

“We don’t know,” Sharon says. “But we think it was a trap. Where are you?”

“Motel room. Never seen it in my life.”

“We’ll trace you.”

“I can just—”

“No,” she snaps before he can finish. “Stay where you are. I’ll come.”

“I can take care of myself, Sharon.”

“James, it’s Wednesday night. You’ve been missing for almost twenty-four hours.”

She says it calmly, voice soft and level, anger and urgency draining out by the second. Bucky doesn’t have that kind of control. His heart trips over its beat and climbs into a pounding crescendo.

“Wednesday,” he echoes numbly.

“Stay where you are. Don’t leave the room. We’ll come.”

She hangs up.

Bucky stares at the screen for a long time. He has over a hundred unread messages and half the amount of missed calls. All Sharon, probably. Maybe Maria. Not like he has many friends. Even his teammates didn’t get along with him because Rumlow’s a pig and Rollins goes where he goes and Murthi keeps to herself—

No. That’s not right.

Rumlow was a pig. Rollins went where he did. Murthi kept to herself.

He stares at the warning yellow of his battery bar for a long time. When he blinks, he sees gold.

-

The three of them ride in silence.

Sharon’s presence is familiar, comforting. She’s a line of warmth against his side, one pale hand clutching his knee in aggressive comfort. Bucky can’t quite bring himself to take her hand or even look her in the eye, but he appreciates her stalwart presence. Maria, on his other side, murmurs intermittently into her phone in a language he can’t place. It’s not every day that the Deputy Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. bothers with their division, at least in an official capacity. Sharon must have asked her to come. Any other day, Bucky would feel strange sitting sandwiched between a couple, but this time, he’s too glad for the comfort.

It’s not the deaths.

Well, it’s not just that. It hasn’t quite sunk in yet. Maybe it won’t for some time. But he’s used to people dying, teams shuffling. He’s numb to seeing familiar but distant faces cold in a coffin, if there’s even enough left for an open casket. He’s long since accepted the fact that one of these days, he’ll be the body they bury.

Losing an entire day. That’s a problem.

It’s selfish. He knows that. But it’s never been death that Bucky feared.

“I’m supposed to be immune to thrall,” he says.

Sharon sucks in a sharp breath like she didn’t expect him to speak. Even Maria turns to him, sharp eyes intent.

“You are,” Sharon says. “They never get to you.”

“I don’t remember anything since Tuesday night.”

She doesn’t say anything to that. A part of Bucky is grateful that she’s not mollifying him with bullshit platitudes, but the other part wants to hear them, have someone just say that he’s wrong and overthinking this. It’s a childish urge, but it’s there, it’s real.

Maria, surprisingly, is the one who replies.

“You’re alive. Unbitten. Let’s say the vampires that slaughtered your team enthralled you. What for? They did nothing. You woke up unharmed in a motel. It doesn’t add up.”

Bucky bites his lips. They feel raw. He thought he shook the habit of chewing them to shreds but seems like it’s come back.

“I don’t know,” he says in the end. “None of this makes sense. It’s like—”

He stops, abruptly out of breath as his head pulses with pain. He raises a hand to massage the temples. Sharon squeezes his thigh in quiet, solid comfort.

“You alright?” Maria asks.

“Yeah. Yeah, just—this is the kind of shit I’d expect after getting shitfaced and picking up some stranger. Not after a mission.”

He even entertains that thought for a moment; maybe he did just get drunk and fuck someone. But he remembers the club and the Witch. He remembers dancing, skin bared and throat arched in calculated invitation.

Did she take it up?

He can’t even remember her face.

“We’ve talked to her. Lorraine,” Maria says, disdain dripping from her voice. “She’s not saying shit.”

“She told us where to find the Witch. How to get her.”

“She set us up,” Sharon says darkly. “I want to stake the bitch and be done with it.”

It’s Bucky’s turn to offer silent comfort. Sharon’s the one who interrogated the vampire. And she’s good at it, knows when they’re lying and when they’re not, but apparently not this time.

“She’s the closest you’ve ever been to the Captain,” Maria points out neutrally. “It’s something.”

“It’s not enough,” Sharon says, low and frustrated, but she slumps back against the seat afterwards, breathing slowly through her nose.

They all lapse back into silence. Bucky prods intermittently at the extensive blank in his memory and each time, he comes up with nothing. It’s almost a relief when they reach the headquarters. The debrief won’t be painless, but it will be better than being alone in his head.

-

Over an hour later, Bucky bitterly reevaluates that assessment.

“Mandatory leave,” he says, repeating after Coulson. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

He gives Bucky that bland little smile of his.

“Your team was killed,” he says, infuriatingly gentle. “And something happened to you that we don’t—”

“Thrall,” Bucky cuts it, ignoring the miniscule twitch of Coulson’s eyebrow. “I was caught in a thrall. There is literally no other explanation.”

“Maybe,” Coulson says. “That only leaves us with more questions. Say you were enthralled—you’re alive. There’s no bite mark on you. Not even a bruise. Why would a vampire catch a hunter and let him go?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” Bucky snaps. “You think I haven’t been losing my mind over this shit?”

The moment he says that, he knows it’s a bad idea. Coulson nods once, like they’ve just settled some deal.

“I understand. Your concerns are natural,” he says, and Bucky hates this implacable bastard sometimes. “It’s precisely why I’d like you take a week off.”

“You’re ordering me to take a week off,” Bucky corrects sharply. “Which I don’t want to.”

Coulson’s unmoved. He doesn’t even get angry. Sometimes, Bucky thinks he’d rather work under Fury alongside all the sorry assholes who chase down human threats as opposed to fucking creatures, but he knows he wouldn’t last a month before he shot the guy in his remaining eye.

“You’re compromised,” Coulson says, as soft as a man can be while being a savage fuck. “With good reason. Take the week, James. We’ll see what we can get out of Lorraine.”

“And if she keeps her mouth shut and we get nothing? What then?”

“Then we stake her,” Coulson says without batting an eye. “But have some faith in Sharon. She’s good.”

“Lack of faith in Sharon isn’t my issue here.”

Coulson just shakes his head.

“We’ll do the best we can to find out what happened. Go home, James.”

Bucky gets up. He lost this battle the moment Coulson mandated the leave, but Bucky’s never known to give up without a fight. He doesn’t look at Coulson when he asks, “Can I see the bodies?”

“Ah.”

He can perfectly imagine how Coulson’s expression softens. It’s more than what most people in this work are capable of. Bucky doesn’t know whether that makes the guy stupid or terrifying.

“Of course, James,” Coulson says.

James nods at him and stalks out of the office.

Sharon is waiting outside, fiddling with her phone. Maria is nowhere in sight.

“Morgue,” Bucky says before she can ask him anything. “I want to see them.”

Sharon’s mouth thins, but she nods.

“I’m coming with you,” she says, predictably enough.

“Don’t you have work to do?” he asks anyway, not with any real heat. “Babysitting me won’t pay.”

“I’m dropping you home too.” Her smile is wide and pleasant, daring him to object. “Maybe I’ll stay over.”

“Please don’t.”

She snorts.

The morgue is in one of the lower levels. Only three of the beds are occupied. Bucky stares at the blinding white sheets and can’t bring himself to walk closer and look. He wants to. Least he can do is say goodbye to their faces.

“Rumlow and Rollins have no family,” Sharon tells him, quiet and hushed. “Murthi’s partner works in analytics. They’re, uh, not doing so well. Funeral’s on Friday. Coulson’s handling it.”

“Okay.”

“Do you want me to…”

“Yes. Please.”

Bucky’s never understood it when they say people look peaceful in death. All he’s ever seen are familiar features twisted into pale, grotesque masks of terror. He makes him look even as his mind rebels against it.

The scar on Rumlow’s face looks deeper like this, more ragged. He used to like to press the tip of his knife against it, claiming it was a good luck charm. Bucky always thought it was just macho bullshit. He did it before they left for the club and well, luck sure didn’t save him.

“I didn’t even like this guy,” he tells Sharon, not taking his eyes off Rumlow. “We never got along.”

“I know. Everyone knew.”

Bucky wipes his hand across his eyes. There are no tears, but his eyes are burning.

“Sharon. Can you do me a favor?”

She lays the sheet back over Rumlow’s face. Her face is expressionless.

“What is it?”

“Let me talk to Lorraine.”

-

“I’ll wait outside,” Sharon says, swiping her id on the door to the cells. “If I see her right now, I might stick a knife in her. Or worse.”

“Not like you to lose your shit like that.”

“I spent the whole day thinking the bitch got my best friend killed,” she says sharply. “Maria damn near shadowed me so I wouldn’t do something stupid.”

It’s the wrong time and definitely the wrong place, but Bucky doesn’t even think, just yanks her into a hug. Her arms wrap around him and _squeeze_ , damn near breaking his ribs, and he doesn’t complain, just stands there with his face buried in her hair.

When they break away, Bucky notes the dark circles and red-rimmed eyes he missed before, too caught up in his own head.

“Maybe you should stay over,” he offers impulsively. “You could use the rest.”

Sharon frowns.

“I’d like the company,” he says before she can refuse. “Not sure if I can sleep alone.”

He’s not sure if he can sleep at all, but having a familiar, safe person in the apartment would help. It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve done this. They joined S.H.I.E.L.D. around the same time, both legacy agents. She had too much to prove, and Bucky had too much rage, and he still thinks their friendship is half the reason the two of them have survived so far. It’s true for him.

“I know what you’re doing,” she says because she’s no one’s fool. “Oh, don’t give me that look, of course I’m staying, now go inside and deal with the leech.”

She sends him inside with a push that counts as gentle, coming from her. The door closes behind him, and Bucky’s momentary levity evaporates. He takes a deep breath and strides down the corridor.

It would be like Silence of the Lambs, except that most of the cells are empty. They don’t keep vampires prisoners for long. That’s the fastest way to get murdered. They barely catch them. Ninety percent of the time, it’s kill or be killed, and when they do manage to subdue one, it’s usually the newly turned ones, most of them young by human standards as well.

Some of them beg. It’s hard to remember, seeing bloody tears roll down pale, young faces, that it’s just a clever lie.

The bite changes people.

That’s the first thing they teach you. The person who trained Bucky and his group against vampires had vicious scars stretching across their neck and shoulders from when they tried and, unfortunately, succeeded in finding their turned wife.

The wife knew them, smiled at them, and tried to rip their throat out.

It’s the stories that linger with Bucky more than the grueling physical training or the hundreds of times he had his stake grip corrected.

She’s in the last cell.

And she’s waiting for him, perched on her cot and facing the glass, mouth curved into a crooked smile. Lorraine’s not young. Bucky doesn’t know how old she is, but he can tell she’s no fledgling. The team that caught her said she surrendered when her thrall didn’t work on one of them, that she didn’t even put up much of a fight.

Maybe they should’ve known then.

“You’re not who I expected,” she says before Bucky can figure out what he wants to ask. “Did the pretty girl get bored of me?”

“She was worried she’d put a stake in your heart if she came.”

Lorraine laughs. Bucky’s not very surprised. For a vampire who surrendered without a fight, Lorraine isn’t very concerned by any threat they throw at her. Bucky watched Sharon grill her, the first time, before the club and this mess. She just watched Sharon with keen eyes, unresponsive until she leaned in and said, “You remind me of someone, darling. What’s your name?”

It only went downhill from there.

“That’s sweet,” Lorraine says, having grown no less infuriating in the last three weeks. “I figured out who she reminded me of. Did she tell you?”

“Cut the shit, Lorraine. Why did you set us up?”

“I knew her,” Lorraine says, still smiling, the curve of her mouth not even touching her cold grey eyes. “Peggy threatened to put a stake in me too. He stopped her though. I was his first, you see. Because it didn’t matter if I didn’t survive.”

Something cold creeps down Bucky’s spine.

In spite of himself, he asks, “What are you talking about?”

She blinks at him. Grey turns to gold for a second, the color dimmer than it used to be. They’ve been feeding her stored blood and just enough that she won’t turn feral. She complains often.

“Ah,” she says. “So that’s how it is.”

In half a breath, she’s _there_ , pressed up against the glass a few feet away from Bucky. He starts back, almost stumbling. Lorraine just stands there, wide eyes intent on Bucky.

“James,” she says, voice trembling with a strange note. “Come here.”

It tugs at Bucky’s head, a familiar sensation—familiar and futile.

“That doesn’t work on me,” he says, dislodging her thrall without breaking eye contact.

And the significance of that hits the next second, freezing his breath in his lungs.

Lorraine steps away from the glass, humming consideringly. Bucky pushes down his own messy thoughts to focus on her.

“These cells won’t open to anyone who’s not immune,” he says. “You know that.”

“I do,” she says. “Always worth a try, hm?”

It’s the kind of thing she’d do. But she’s never done it to Bucky before. She hasn’t even talked to him much, always fixated more on Sharon.

Sharon. Fuck, _Sharon_.

“Peggy,” Bucky says softly. “Peggy Carter.”

A smile almost splits Lorraine’s face in half.

“Yes,” she says dreamily. “Hell of a woman. Looked like a dream and smelled it to. She does too—the pretty girl. She won’t tell me her name, you know. Is it still Carter?”

Founding Director Carter died about a decade ago. She was nearly eighty-five. He replays Lorraine’s words in his head. There’s a bigger picture here, but he can’t piece it together. He doesn’t have enough information.

“How did you know Peggy Carter?”

But Lorraine’s already turning away, blond curls bouncing as she strides across the room. She sits cross-legged on her cot and pins Bucky with a knowing gaze.

“He’d like her,” she says. “The pretty girl. He liked Peggy. But he liked you more, and that’s all that mattered in the end.”

Bucky’s heart starts pounding.

“Who are you talking about, Lorraine?”

She tips her head back, arching her thin, pale throat. There’s a smile on her face, serene and strange.

“My captain, of course.”

-

It’s not very late when they shuffle sleepily to bed, gorged on cheap takeout and clad in Bucky’s loosest shirts. Sharon’s got her favorite among his shirts to use as sleepwear and her own side of the bed. It’s a wonder they’ve never been roommates, but she was living with her boyfriend when they met, and when that ended, Bucky had another flatmate, and by the time that guy left, Sharon had moved in with Maria. It’s a great tragedy, of course, but Bucky can afford to live alone these days, so there’s that.

“You changed the sheets since your last fuck, right?” Sharon asks.

“My last fuck was two months ago, as you _know_ , so what do you think?”

“The day I trust a man with hygiene is the day I die of a UTI.”

“Fuck you too.”

She laughs and crawls into bed, wrapping the covers around her. Bucky gets a spare set, well aware that she’ll make a valiant effort to steal them in the night. She’s a menace when she’s awake, but asleep, she’s worse.

He almost goes to sleep without saying anything. But lying there, staring at the ceiling with his thoughts repeatedly returning to Lorraine, he finds that he can’t not ask.

“Lorraine knew your great-aunt.”

There’s no response for a minute or so. Just when Bucky thinks she’s fallen asleep, Sharon says, “She told you, huh.”

“Yeah. You alright?”

“’Course. Always knew something happened there, in the war. It wasn’t only the Nazis that made Aunt Peggy form S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“She did spearhead the vampire purges.”

“For a time.” Sharon sighs. She turns over, and when Bucky looks at her, he finds a pair of eyes peeking out from over the covers. “She was always happy to tell me stories about those days. Except about this. She shut down whenever I brought up the vamps. And later, when she—when she wasn’t all there, she’d—she’d wake up screaming sometimes. Names. And strange things. I don’t remember now. But it terrified me then, for some reason.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. What else did she tell you?”

“She called him her captain.” The phrasing lingers with Bucky. There was something oddly haunting about her smile. “And then nothing else. She didn’t admit she set us up for the Witch, but she wasn’t denying it either.”

_He liked you more, and that’s all that mattered in the end._

He keeps thinking about that. He doesn’t know how to begin explaining that mess of a conversation to Sharon, doesn’t even know where to start. He still wants to try, but something stays his tongue.

“That’s been her tune since the club fiasco,” Sharon says, and Bucky pushes that memory aside to focus on her. “The Captain, huh? That’s new. She usually just taunts me with Aunt Peggy.”

“Slight fixation there. With you too.”

“Trust me,” Sharon says drily. “I’ve noticed.”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it? That she’s one of the Captain’s?”

“They’re usually a hell of a lot more tight-lipped. All happy to die for that fucker.”

“If she’d told us earlier,” Bucky says softly, “we might have been better prepared for the trap.”

Sharon’s expression turns grim. Well, grimmer.

“Yeah. We would have.”

Bucky sighs, but it turns into a jaw-splitting yawn. Exhaustion tugs at the corners of his eyes, but he’s reluctant to go to sleep. The gaping void in his memory is never far from his thoughts, and that’s not helping him any.

“Lorraine tried to enthrall me,” Bucky finally confesses.

He doesn’t know why he didn’t tell her before. And whatever expression was on his face when he came out of the cells, it made her take one look at him and swallow her questions.

Sharon’s quiet, but he can feel her keen interest.

“It didn’t work.”

Her exhale is audibly sharp.

“That means—”

“We don’t _know_ what it means,” Bucky cuts in. “I’m missing a whole day, Sharon.”

“There could be other reasons. Maybe they—knocked you out, drugged you, something. Thrall isn’t selective, James. And immunity like what we’ve got doesn’t just go away.”

Bucky wonders if it’s just him she’s trying to reassure. Sharon’s got it too. And what she’s saying is true. It’s just that Bucky doesn’t have the slightest inkling what truly happened. It terrifies him.

“I guess.”

The Sharon-burrito wriggles a little, and then there’s a hand on his, fingers linking with his. He can’t feel anything but light pressure, but it’s comforting anyway.

“I’m just glad you’re safe,” she says, soft and hushed. “Scared me, asshole.”

“Scared me too,” Bucky confesses, gently squeezing his hand. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be stupid. Go to sleep.”

He doesn’t tell her that he’s a little scared to sleep. It feels like he’ll wake up missing more time, blanks in his memory that tug at him, pulling him to places he can’t enter.

“Good night,” he says instead.

He closes his eyes.

-

Bucky wakes calmly, quietly, eyes blinking open between one moment and the next.

There’s a moment of confusion before his eyes adjust to the city lights filtering in through the curtains. Sharon’s light snoring yanks him into full awareness, just as his throat flares in a painful demand for water.

He swallows, grimacing at the dryness. It takes him a few minutes to pry his body out of bed, careful so as not to wake Sharon. She’s not a very light sleeper, but she won’t sleep through him thudding to the floor either.

He half ambles to the door, opening and closing it gently. He almost runs into the wall trying to walk to the kitchen and has to take a moment to just stand there, one hand braced on the wall.

This is why he keeps a bottle in his room, but he had other concerns last night.

He makes it to the kitchen without bodily harm. The icy water feels like heaven on his throat, and he drains half the bottle, dully resigned to being woken before he wants to be by a full bladder. He caps the bottle and takes it back with him, and he plans to crawl right into bed, but he finds himself on his narrow balcony instead, idly tracing the leaf of a half-dead plant as he stares out into the darkness.

The street is empty.

There’s a sound from behind him—Sharon, turning over with a little snort. He turns over. She’s a lump in the middle of the bed, sleeping undisturbed, half of Bucky’s blankets tangled around her legs. He almost goes back to bed.

A faint breeze laps at his face, lifting the ends of his hair.

Bucky turns back to the street.

A man’s leaning against the wall of the building opposite, staring up at Bucky. His face is in shadow, but the streetlight illuminates his silhouette. Bucky stares blankly at broad shoulders and hair that gleams gold.

There’s a slow tingling sensation spreading across him from head to toe.

He doesn’t know how long he stands there. Between one blink and the next, the man vanishes, and Bucky returns to bed.

-

“You get up some time last night?” Sharon asks over breakfast.

Bucky looks up from the eggs he was pushing aimlessly around the plate.

“Huh? No. I mean, I don’t remember. Maybe.”

She frowns.

“Must have been a dream then.”

-

Sharon stays with him until the funeral on Friday. Maria picks her up from Bucky’s place, and Sharon slots to her side with an ease that fills Bucky with a quiet longing.

At the funeral, he keeps his head down and pays his respects. He doesn’t look Murthi’s partner in the eye.

Afterward, he drives home and sleeps like the dead for five hours straight, head blank and quiet in a way that’s as comforting as it’s unsettling.

In hindsight, that turns out to be a stupid idea. Night falls, and he’s restless, with an itch under his skin he can’t escape. The apartment is too loud and empty without Sharon, and the solitude is usually pleasant, but after today, after this week, it’s unbearable.

Bucky only pauses to change out of his sweats into jeans and a tee before he leaves, intent on drinking himself to more oblivion. It’s not a wise habit to foster, least of all in his line of work, but there are exceptions.

It’s a small bar, cozy and quiet. The bartender greets him by name and serves him his usual, and sometimes, Bucky can see himself live and die like this—get hurt, kill vampires, watch them kill others, come back to an empty apartment, escape to the dingy walls of a bar, and, one day, get killed himself. It would be a pathetic saga, but he’s seen others live and die the same.

What the fuck else would he do anyway? He lost an arm and still came back to S.H.I.E.L.D., and he can’t bring himself to regret it, not even when his father looks at him with sad, scared eyes. Bucky doesn’t visit him often. Bucky reminds him of his mother—the same eyes, same face, same drive, same soul-sucking job. Mildred Barnes came home in pieces when Bucky was fourteen. At least if the same happens to him, he won’t be leaving a kid behind.

He won’t leave anyone behind. Just his dad, and he’s semi-resigned to that fate already.

“I’ll have what he’s having.”

The voice that interrupts his morose musings is deep, pleasant, but it’s the warm of a body suddenly close to his that makes Bucky turn his head and look. He notices the hair first, thick and gleaming gold, the kind that would feel so good to sink your hands into. Bucky follows that thought to its natural conclusion, trailing his eyes along the man’s strong, clean-shaven jaw and down to a barrel-broad torso. He eyes those insanely thick biceps and takes a sip of whiskey to soothe the spark of interest in his gut.

The man turns his head and doesn’t seem surprised to find Bucky staring. He looks pleased, and that’s half the reason why Bucky doesn’t look away. The other half is the man’s blue eyes, bright and bewitching.

That spark turns into a little fire.

“That line work for you often?” Bucky asks, bold from the drink and with nothing to lose.

A corner of the man’s mouth tilts up, and his eyes crinkle. The expression does good things to his face, not that it needs to be any more handsome.

“Why, should I try harder?”

Bucky laughs and leans in a little, making a show of running his eyes down the guy’s mouth-wateringly impressive physique. It’s not particularly subtle, but he’s got the feeling that this will be one of _those_ evenings.

“You?” Bucky damn near purrs, dragging his leering gaze back to those pretty blues. “Nah, pal. You’re good.”

The man seems amused, but Bucky can see the telltale darkening of his eyes and the way they linger on Bucky’s lips when he takes another sip.

“Glad to hear,” he murmurs a little absently, staring at Bucky’s mouth. “I’m Steve.”

“James.”

“Yeah?” Steve asks, narrowing his eyes a little. “You don’t look like a James.”

Bucky laughs. That’s a first. When he was younger, he got shit all the time for going by Bucky. It was his grandma’s name for him, the legacy of her dead brother, and even after she passed, his mum used it. Then his mum died too, and when he changed schools, he started introducing himself as James. He doesn’t regret that, because Bucky was for Rebecca and Mildred and well, Bucky. The world can take James and break him on the wheel.

But it would be fucking stupid to spell his personal tragedies to this stranger, and Bucky chalks the odd impulse to the fucked-up week he’s had.

“What do I look like then?” he asks instead.

Steve turns to his newly arrived drink and traces a finger around the rim. He’s got long fingers. Big hands. Bucky watches it move with no small amount of interest.

“I don’t know yet,” Steve says, smiling down at his glass. “I’ll tell you when I do.”

“Yeah? You plan to stick around long?”

Steve slants him a sideways glance and a smile full of secrets.

“Long enough.”

-

Bucky’s slammed into a brick wall, and it takes every ounce of self-control he’s got not to throw his legs around Steve and climb him like a fucking tree. He grabs Steve’s too-tight t-shirt instead, curling his flesh hand into the yielding fabric.

Steve stares down at him with dark, hungry eyes and does nothing.

“What?” Bucky says. “You gonna kiss me or just stand there looking pretty?”

“Think I’m pretty, sweetheart?”

“ _Now_ he sweethearts me.”

Steve throws his head back and laughs. Bucky loses his patience and presses his mouth to the hollow of his throat, licking a wet stripe up the warm skin. Steve’s grip on his shoulders suddenly turns bruising. His throat moves under Bucky’s mouth, Adam’s apple swelling.

“You wanna get rough, you do it right,” Bucky says softly, half a taunt.

It works.

Those damn long fingers grab his chin and keep him place for a kiss that starts out bruising and turns wet and dirty, Steve licking into his mouth with a confidence that borders on arrogance. Bucky opens up for it with a groan, sinking into the strong, broad body pinning him, blood burning hot when Steve’s other hand slides down his body, possessive and groping.

They break away as roughly as they slammed together. Bucky’s panting, and Steve’s lips are wet and parted.

“Wanted to do that since I saw you at the bar,” Steve confesses, voice already hoarse.

“Don’t scandalize Jerry. He likes me.”

“Yeah?” Steve’s tone is light, amused, but his eyes only hold ravenous want. “I can see why.”

“Honey,” Bucky purrs, finally sliding his hands into Steve’s hair, gripping the thick softness of it. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

He pulls Steve’s head down. It’s Bucky’s turn to have a taste, and Steve lets him, opening his mouth with a sigh, curling his tongue around Bucky’s as if inviting him inside. Bucky almost gets lost in the warm-whiskey taste of him, but there’s a little ping of clarity that pulls him from the sweet distraction of Steve sucking on his tongue.

He bites at Steve’s lip and licks at his teeth, flicking his tongue along the gums of his canines.

It’s objectively weird, but it’s a tip of sorts that one of his S.H.I.E.L.D. mentors told him, joking at first, but then leaning in with a grim face to say, _Trust no one, kid. They look like us, walk like us, fuck like us, and sometimes, you just don’t know until it’s too late._

There was a story there, probably. There’s always a story.

Steve pulls back, startled, which is one of the more common reactions. Those who even notice usually think Bucky has a fetish, which gets interesting reactions for sure. Then Steve laughs. It’s a good sound, deep and full-bodied, washing warmly over Bucky.

“You’re cute, kid,” Steve says, slotting his thumb along the dip in Bucky’s chin.

“I’m thirty-four,” Bucky tells him, trying but failing to sound indignant when all of him is melting from the look in Steve’s eyes. “Ain’t a kid.”

Steve’s grin just widens.

“Practically ancient,” he says, crowding closer, and god, the way he just eats up space makes Bucky’s knees weak. He damn near collapses when Steve’s huge palm cups the side of his face and tilts his face up into a hot, demanding kiss.

Steve’s tongue slides into his mouth, a wet, dirty slide, and his other hand’s ceaselessly moving along Bucky’s body, feeling him up through clothes in that rough, groping way that says Steve’s aching for bare skin. Bucky wants to give it to him, wants to crawl up him buck naked, but they’re in some dingey alley Bucky pulled them to, and he’s got _some_ sense left.

At least until Steve cups his ass and gives it a good, hard squeeze, and Bucky jerks his hips forward with a punched-out groan.

“S-sorry,” he hisses against Steve’s lips, the apology undermined by how he’s still rutting a little, moving in helpless little twitches. “Fuck, sorry, it’s just been a long time.”

Steve’s the opposite of unbothered, judging by how he thrusts his fucking thigh between Bucky’s legs to give really give him something to grind on. Bucky whimpers and does just that, clinging to Steve’s shoulders as he rides his leg.

“That so?” Steve asks, smirking now, the smug bastard. “Pretty little thing like you, I find that hard to believe.”

The sound Bucky makes is downright embarrassing, but damn if he can stop moving. He’s—he’s no pretty little thing, that isn’t something anyone calls a muscled six-foot man with a metal arm, but Steve says it and sounds like he means it, and logic takes a backseat to the raging fire in Bucky’s blood.

Steve kisses them then, drinking in Bucky’s needy sounds. He’s still got a hand on his ass, and he kneads the cheeks through jeans Bucky’s starting to hate.

A passing car honks, and Bucky almost jumps out of his skin. He doesn’t pull away from Steve because there’s no space for it; he’s trapped almost literally between a rock and a hard place, and he fucking likes it.

“Take me home,” Bucky tells Steve, panting the words, “before we get arrested for public indecency.”

“Public would thank us for the view,” Steve says, and it’s almost smooth, how he slides his hand up Bucky’s shirt, but he doesn’t need game anymore, Bucky’s a sure thing. “But I don’t want to share you.”

“Oh god.”

Bucky lets his head fall back against the wall, trying in vain to compose himself. He manages, somehow, to stay still and not hump Steve’s leg like a rutting mutt.

“Cab,” he grits out, keeping his eyes closed because Steve’s pretty face is more than he can take right now. “Your place or mine?”

“Both works.”

“Mine then,” Bucky says, fishing his phone out of his pockets and somehow fumbling through the passcode.

Steve’s no help through the whole thing. He just doesn’t stop touching Bucky, seemingly content to just spent hours feeling him up in the mouth of an alley. Bucky manages to book an uber despite the distraction, and the moment he puts his phone away, Steve’s kissing him, ravenous like the three minutes Bucky spent composing himself was three centuries of separation.

Bucky wants to make some quip, but then Steve slides both hands under his ass and _lifts_ , and Bucky’s brain fizzles out.

He wraps his legs around Steve. His cock’s hard and aching under the confining denim, and he can feel the telltale bulge between Steve’s legs, an impressive promise of more. Bucky winds his fingers more firmly into Steve’s hair and kisses him wet and messy, the last of his shame dying a noble death.

They make out like teenagers until the cab arrives.

The driver shoots them pointed looks as they clamber into the backseat, but it seems to be less judgement than concern for her upholstery. Bucky gives her what he hopes is a reassuring grin, but from the way her expression twists further, he wasn’t very successful. And Steve doesn’t really act like someone who doesn’t intend to fuck in a car; his hands are _everywhere_ , sliding over clothes and slithering under, and Bucky squirms a little but doesn’t try very hard to get away, deeming a bad customer rating a worthy price to pay for Steve’s consuming attention.

Still, they last the ride without getting their dicks out, which Bucky counts as a win.

“Home sweet home,” Bucky says, dragging Steve to the elevator. It’s a short ride up, but it’s Bucky’s turn to be insatiable, kissing his way up Steve’s throat, not that he makes it far before a hand fists his hair and pulls his head back for a hard, devouring kiss.

They stumble out into the hallway, still kissing, and luckily don’t run into anyone before Bucky fumbles the door open, and the two of them stagger inside, wrapped up in each other.

Steve acts like he was only waiting to get Bucky to himself before stripping him bare. His shirt’s yanked up his arms, jeans unbuttoned, and before Bucky can do more than suck in a sharp breath, there’s a palm cupping his cock through his briefs.

“Fuck,” he gasps into Steve’s shoulder. “Christ, you move fast.”

The hand Steve isn’t using to casually turn Bucky’s brain to mush runs down his spine and then back up, sliding into his hair again to grip tight. That sends a bolt straight to Bucky’s dick, and he grinds into Steve’s hand, feeling wanton and desperate.

“You mind?” Steve asks, and it takes Bucky a minute to even understand what the question’s about.

He presses his bare torso flush to Steve’s sadly clothed body and asks, “What do you think?”

Steve kisses the sass out of his mouth and sucks burning kisses down his neck. His tongue flicks over Bucky’s pounding pulse, a fleeting sensation that makes his blood sing. He arches his throat, begging without words, and keens when Steve’s teeth catch hold of the skin there, a sharp sting that’s soon replaced by hot suction. That’ll leave a mark, and the thought sends a thrill through Bucky. Then Steve starts massaging his cock as he sucks bruises along Bucky’s throat and collar, and thoughts become faint, distant things.

They make it to bed, somehow. Bucky’s higher brain functions surface momentarily, long enough that he manages to pin Steve to the door and wrestle his shirt off. It sticks to Steve’s muscles like a second layer of skin and seeing what’s exposed underneath, Bucky empathizes greatly with the shirt. He drops to his knees and sucks wet kisses along Steve’s abdomen and hips before taking the zipper of his jeans between his teeth.

He looks up and smirks when he sees Steve staring down with dark eyes.

He opens Steve’s fly with his teeth. The first time he tried this, he split his lower lip, but Bucky’s never been a quitter, and when he has Steve open and exposed and looks up again to find his expression twisted with raw hunger, he remembers just why he bled for this little trick.

Bucky presses his open mouth to Steve’s underwear, drooling over the dark fabric. Steve’s fingers tighten in his hair, gripping, not guiding, and Bucky hums, pleased, and turns his head to rub his cheek against the bulge of Steve’s cock like an affectionate cat.

“God,” Steve hisses, control audibly fraying. “Fuckin’ tease.”

Bucky blinks up Steve through his lashes and bites back a grin when that just makes him swear under his breath.

“What are you gonna do about it?”

Steve’s jaw sets, and Bucky’s stomach swoops with anticipation.

Steve doesn’t let him down. He hauls Bucky to his feet by the hair, and he moans at the harsh tug on his scalp, fighting to stay upright on trembling legs. And then that’s not a problem because Steve’s lifting him, throwing Bucky over his shoulder with a breathtaking lack of effort. He kicks out in instinctive surprise, but Steve doesn’t even falter. His hand comes down on Bucky’s ass in a playful smack that stings even through the denim. He whines, cock pulsing with want, and it’s both relieving and disappointing when Steve throws him down on the bed.

Bucky bounces once and then lies still, sprawled on his back and still stunned.

And then he’s stunned for a whole other reason while Steve strips, working his jeans down his legs, pushing his underwear down with it. Bucky doesn’t know where to stare; he wants a hundred more eyes to take in Steve’s rippling abs and bulging biceps and thick thighs and his fucking masterpiece of a cock.

“ _Fuck_ me,” he gasps and groans immediately after; it’s not that he doesn’t mean it, just that he didn’t plan to say it.

“I intend to,” Steve says, crawling into bed and making short work of Bucky’s pants, and Bucky would be offended by the presumption except that he hasn’t exactly been subtle since they started talking in the bar.

Steve looms over him, his powerful body and huge arms caging Bucky in, and his heart skips a beat.

“Hey,” he croaks.

“Hey,” Steve says.

He’s smiling, the expression soft. Bucky would call it tender, but that’s too sweet a word for a one-night stand. But then Steve lifts one hand to brush his knuckles against Bucky’s cheek, and it’s hard not to melt at that sort of attention.

Steve lowers himself into a kiss that makes Bucky’s toes curl. He chases Steve’s mouth when he draws back, but Steve gently pushes him down and drags his mouth down Bucky’s jaw and throat, pressing light, barely-there kisses that gets Bucky’s breath stuttering. Steve nuzzles into the dip between his pecs, rubbing his mouth and cheeks there, the gesture strangely adorable.

The sweetness turns sharp the next moment when he leans to the side and closes his teeth around a perked nipple.

Bucky gasps at the sting and grasps Steve’s shoulder, metal fingers digging in. The gleam of metal on flesh catches his eyes, and that’s when it occurs to him to wonder that Steve didn’t once mention the arm, not with words or the nonverbal cues Bucky had to learn to spot because people see a guy with a metal arm and get weird one way or the other. Most of his flings just studiously ignore it after the initial bout of not-as-surreptitious-as-they-think staring.

And then there’s Steve, happily mouthing at Bucky’s chest like the scars curved around his left shoulder, with a few silvery-pink fissures biting into his chest, are invisible.

No, not invisible. Steve’s lips brush the edge of a cluster of scar tissue, and he doesn’t react except to kiss his way up that too, tongue and teeth working like they did everywhere else.

Steve stops abruptly and looks up, pinning Bucky with his eyes.

“What is it?” he murmurs. “You’re tense.”

Bucky takes a deep breath and lets it out real slow.

“Keep going,” he says, hoping Steve will ignore the catch in his voice. “I like what you’re doing.”

Steve smiles, and it’s not belief that turns his expression gentle but understanding mixed with indulgence. Bucky touches his face, tracing the curve of his eyebrows and testing the give of his cheeks. Steve turns his face into Bucky’s palm, lips puckering sweetly against the center. Bucky can’t feel the warmth of his lips, can barely feel the gentle pressure, but his arm whirs anyway, plates recalibrating loudly. He freezes, but Steve just smiles, the expression almost smug.

“Think it likes me,” he tells Bucky. “Do you?”

“Yeah,” Bucky breathes, startled by how much he means it.

Steve’s mouth curves into a slow, smug smile. Bucky can’t just look at it, so he tugs Steve up and kisses it off his mouth, though maybe that backfires because the smile only widens, and it’s no less bright for how it’s pressed to Bucky’s lips than burned into his retina. Then those searing lips are sliding down his jaw, his neck, soft and hot, and Bucky just sighs, melting quietly into the sheets.

Teeth clamp around his nipple, harder than last time, and Bucky clenches all over, letting slip a trembling shout.

Steve flicks his tongue over the captive tip, and Bucky clutches his shoulder like he’s going to push him away, but he knows himself better and only clings desperately as Steve sucks and nips at the little nub until it’s swollen and throbbing. He squirms when those tender mercies turn to the other side, and this time, Steve doesn’t let up until Bucky’s whole pectoral is a burning bruise.

Bucky pants, gaping down at the motley of bruises.

“Damn,” he breathes. “Animal.”

“You don’t like marks?” Steve asks, too fucking late, but his smirk says he’s not really asking.

“Fuck you,” Bucky says, turning his face away to hide the sudden heat on his cheeks. Steve laughs, but it’s not mean—well, maybe it’s a little mean, the kind that gets Bucky’s gut all hot and tight.

Steve’s palm flattens along his stomach, and Bucky’s so overheated that it feels cold. He shivers, and then he’s shuddering for a whole other reason as that makes its slow, meandering way to his cock.

Long fingers wrap loosely around the length of it, Steve’s thumb resting on the wet slit. He rubs, firm but teasing, and Bucky can’t help pushing into that maddening grip, chasing more—more pressure, more movement, just _more_.

“Easy, tiger,” Steve murmurs, and when Bucky looks at him, he’s lying on his side and looking intently down at his hand around Bucky’s cock.

“Don’t tease,” Bucky chokes out.

Steve smiles, sweet with a bit of an edge, without looking at Bucky.

“Turnabout is fair play, sweetheart.”

The endearment trembles along Bucky’s skin. He throws a hand to the side without looking, glad he’s on the side of the bed so he can grope along the table while staying right where he is, pressed close to Steve and being tenderly tortured.

He strikes gold after a few distracted seconds, fingers closing around a packet of condoms. He throws it at Steve, who peers down at the dark cover with an expression of mild surprise.

“Lube under the pillow,” Bucky tells him. He wriggles his hips in clear suggestion. “Get on with it, come on.”

Steve lets out a bark of inelegant laughter.

“Bossy,” he says, grinning. “Need it that bad?”

“Pal, you got no idea how long it’s been since I got fucked. Damn right I need it.”

The change in sudden and startling.

One second, Steve’s lying beside him, stroking Bucky’s cock like he’s got all the time in the world, and the next, he’s looming over Bucky with an expression that’s downright predatory.

“Like I said,” Steve damn near purrs, pressing his considerable weight down on Bucky, pinning him down, “I find that hard to believe.”

“A-ain’t being coy.”

Steve licks a wet stripe up Bucky’s throat, and he shivers at the sensation, then again when cool air hits the damp skin. Steve pulls back, lube suddenly in hand. Bucky didn’t even notice him reach for it, but his body’s quick to react, legs spreading eagerly. Steve doesn’t take his eyes off Bucky as he slicks his fingers with one hand, and Bucky can’t, for the life of him, look away. They’re arresting eyes on an arresting man, and Bucky feels bewitched, mind and body held in place. It would be almost scary if he didn’t like it so much, and he’s not quite sure whether he’s just desperate for dick or if Steve really does push every one of his buttons all at once.

He’s got a feeling that it’s the latter.

Steve rubs two fingers against his hole. It’s warming lube because Bucky’s good to himself, but Steve’s fingers still feel cold. It’s like Bucky’s boiling, the heat in him climbing with each passing second.

He expects something slow and maddening. Steve’s given him plenty of indication that he’s the sort to drag it out good and sweet, going well beyond careful with sure purpose.

Instead, he gets a whispered warning to _breathe_ and a sudden, searing pressure.

Bucky arches off the bed as two fingers shove sharply into him, opening him mercilessly wide. Steve hooks them before Bucky can even curse, thick fingers curving almost cruelly. Bucky’s breath is punched out of his chest, and he slumps to the bed, limp and dazed.

“You’re warm,” Steve says, and when Bucky blinks a few times in a semi-successful attempt to focus on that pretty face, he finds Steve with his eyes half closed like he’s basking in the hot clench of Bucky’s hole.

His fingers pull out, a slow, heady drag that stands in perfect counterpoint to the way he pushed them in. Bucky whimpers, everything _burning_. Steve smooths his free hand along Bucky’s thigh and belly before wrapping it around his cock in strange comfort. He doesn’t stroke, just holds him, the grip almost absent as he focuses on fingering Bucky open. He’s brutally efficient about it, doesn’t let Bucky even breathe, and when he tightens up without even meaning to, Steve coaxes him back open, quiet and confident like he’s never imagined that Bucky wouldn’t give it up for him.

It’s infuriating. It’s the hottest fucking thing.

Bucky unspools softly, the tension pulled out of his body with every firm slide of Steve’s fingers into him, until he’s lying there with his mouth open and body loose, taking Steve’s fingers—two, then three, then the sharp edge of a fourth—without even a whisper of resistance.

He trembles against the sheets, body hot and damp with sweat, muscles oddly lax. It’s shockingly good, all of it, and Bucky’s not used to random one-night stands playing his body better than a lover who’s had months to learn the ways of his flesh, but he’s not complaining. And it takes his breath away to see Steve focus so intently on what he’s doing, watching with a radiant blend of awe and satisfaction as his fingers pry Bucky open and take him apart.

Bucky decides then and there that he’s going to get this man’s number before he lets him escape his clutches.

Steve pulls his fingers out, and Bucky spreads his legs wider, breathlessly eager to be speared on that thick cock, but Steve only pours more lube over his fingers before returning them to Bucky’s hole. The tips smear the warm wetness around Bucky’s gaping rim. Blazing blue eyes meets Bucky’s, and he forgets to breathe.

Steve doesn’t look away as he pushes his fingers in, all four in one, forceful thrust.

Bucky screams soundlessly. His body clamps down tight on Steve’s fingers.

“Ssh,” Steve croons, soothing Bucky with his free hand stroking along his flank. “You’re doing good, sweetheart. Takin’ me so well.”

The praise curls into a soft, warm ball in Bucky’s gut, lighting him up from the inside. He relaxes without conscious thought, coaxed into sweet bonelessness by Steve’s murmured endearments and soft touches.

“Fuck me,” Bucky gasps. “Come on, it’s enough, fuck me.”

Steve’s insanely long lashes sweep down, hiding his eyes from view for a second.

“Soon,” he promises, spreading his fingers inside Bucky, silencing an automatic protest. “I know, I know. Just let me take my time, sweetheart.”

It’s unfair, how Steve can get Bucky to agree to damn near anything just by calling him sweetheart in that tone, quiet and dripping with sincerity. His hands make an even more convincing case in favor of taking time, the soft pads of his fingers massaging Bucky’s prostate while Steve’s other hand returns to Bucky’s cock and strokes from base to tip, spreading precome along the hot, pulsing length.

Bucky twists the sheets between his fingers and fight not to turn into a mindless pile of melting _want_.

He tries to be patient, he does, and he likes it, everything Steve’s doing to him, but the pleasure sweeping through him turns sharp without warning, a clear sign of impending climax, and Bucky realizes with shocking vehemence that he doesn’t want to come without Steve inside him.

“Please, please, Steve, please,” he babbles, reaching for Steve and finding his hand caught in a larger one. “In me, don’t want to come like this, get in me.”

Steve groans. It’s the most raw, uncontrolled noise Steve has let slip. Bucky pries his eyes open and tries to watch his face, but Steve’s hunched over, strands of his hair falling into his place.

“Yeah,” he says, voice a guttural rasp now. “I’ve got you.”

Bucky shudders, anticipation trembling through the whole of him.

Steve’s expression is a thing of beauty when he rears up over Bucky, blue eyes wide and hungry, mouth wet and parted. It makes Bucky forget the sudden emptiness inside of him, but the sight of Steve slicking up his cock and putting on the condom brings the impatience back again.

“How do you want me?” he asks, leaning on his elbows to better watch Steve’s wet cockhead emerge from the circle of his fist.

Steve puts a hand flat on Bucky’s belly, with just enough pressure to make it an order than a suggestion.

“Just like this,” Steve says, looking at home between Bucky’s thighs. “I want to see you.”

Bucky drops limply back, and it’s a minor miracle that his face can still heat up despite the inferno coursing through his veins. He makes an embarrassing sound and turns his head, hair hiding his face from Steve’s intent stare. He doesn’t get to shy away for long. Fingers sweep the hair aside, and Bucky has neither the strength nor the desire to resist the gentle hold that tilts his head up for a swift, glancing kiss.

Steve’s eyes are half-lidded when he pulls back, and he hovers over Bucky for a long moment, muscles clenched in strain.

Bucky smiles at him.

“Hey.”

Steve’s thumb rubs at the edge of the smile, and Bucky turns his head to kiss the pad of it. He bites, not very gently, and sucks on the lube-warm skin, ignoring the chemical taste in favor of Steve’s sharp hiss.

He lets Steve’s hand go and blinks up at him, well aware of the sight he makes.

It works like a charm. Steve settles back between Bucky’s legs and, in one smooth motion, raises his legs to Steve’s shoulders, exposing his hole. Bucky lightly crosses his ankles, enjoying the sight of Steve willingly trapped between his thick thighs. Steve takes his hands away with a hard squeeze to Bucky’s legs, _finally_ impatient. He leads his cock to Bucky’s hole, gaze flicking between that and Bucky’s face, hunger etched into every line of his face. Bucky nods, an unnecessary affirmation, and Steve’s eyes close with a flutter as he finally starts to press in.

And then Bucky forgets to watch him, sucked into the flaring sensations in his own body.

Steve’s huge, the kind of thick that gets you choking on air, and but Bucky’s been stretched lovingly open, so all that’s left is a pleasant, consuming burn that has him bearing down on Steve’s cock, eager for every inch of it. Steve never once stops, pushing in and in and _in_ , gentle but inexorable, carving deeper into Bucky’s body with every second.

Bucky breathes through clenched teeth and reaches for Steve’s hunched body, fingers digging into meaty shoulders. Steve leans forward, bowing over Bucky’s body, and Bucky unwraps his legs from Steve’s shoulders to wrap them around his waist, gasping when the movement makes the cock inside him shift. Steve’s hips drive up, shoving another, unexpected inch into Bucky.

He cries out, and Steve collapses, his weight kept carefully off Bucky while he buries his face in Bucky’s neck. He doesn’t seem to be breathing, and Bucky, who can’t stop dragging in great gulps of air, cards his fingers through Steve’s fine hair, a quiet comfort to them both.

“God,” he gasps, left hand scrabbling gently, uselessly at Steve’s back. “Steve. Christ, Steve.”

“Bucky,” Steve chokes out. “You’re so _warm_.”

Bucky doesn’t understand, not at first, the sliver of unease that competes with pleasure at the praise. And then it hits, sudden and sharp. He stills, breath shuddering in his throat.

“I didn’t tell you my name was Bucky.”

Steve doesn’t tense, doesn’t even breathe out.

“You didn’t have to,” he says, lips brushing Bucky’s ear, the words pitched low like a secret. “I know you, Buck.”

Bucky goes cold all over, arousal dying with a shock.

Steve raises his head. Bucky can’t move.

Gold-veined blue meets his. Steve’s teeth are blunt, his skin warm from Bucky’s skin. It’s not his strength that’s keeping Bucky frozen.

“Bucky,” Steve whispers, soft and reverent. “Remember who you are.”

**Author's Note:**

> Drop me a comment if you can <3


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